Today, much like every other day, I should be studying. But today I feel a particular sense of melancholy and foreboding. I *should* feel on a high, because last night Simple Minds actually, FINALLY, debuted on ‘Later…with Jools Holland.’ They were incredible. Vision Thing sounded AMAZING. I actually shouted out when they finished “THAT’S THE WAY YOU FUCKING DO IT! GET IN!!!!” I was ssoooo pumped by that performance. With First You Jump I started to take less notice of the performance as a whole because come the second verse, Jim was starting to struggle to remember the lines. He ad libbed very well, but I was going off my nut. I was praising him for knowing the words to Vision Thing and singing his praises and that was just KILLER – but then comes FYJ and from the off I was like “he’s not singing the best line, HE’S NOT SINGING THE BEST LINE!” (“I’d call you – no matter what you put me through” – which I much prefer to “I’d call you – you’re the only one that pulls me through” – which is the ONLY line he sings live). So I’m ranting at him through the screen saying “Oh, come on! I was just praising you for the best fucking version of Vision Thing. I thought you’d been doing your homework! I thought you’d been studying your lines! I know you have so many songs to remember and these are new ones – BUT YOU WROTE IT!!!! IT’S IMPORTANT!!!” I stopped ranting long enough to take in that he pulled it back for ending it with the “becoming what you’re meant to” line. God bless you, Jim Kerr! I love you more than it should actually be feasible. There was nothing else wrong with it. The performance was superb. I just get upset with Jim when he blunders the lines. I guess I just find them even MORE important than even he does – the fucking SONGWRITER. I want them sung right – projected correctly. I guess I’m just a completely pedantic, anally retentive fud like that. What can I say?
I roll my eyes at them feeling obliged to perform Don’t You (Forget About Me). Thankful it won’t be 12 minutes long, like it usually is at any Simple Minds concert. Oh, to have been able to attend the 5×5 Live tour! Honestly – I don’t hate the song. And I lost count the number of times I watched The Breakfast Club over the years, but…there’s only so much of it one can take.
Anyway, again. A stellar version and performance. They were amazing on the show. Jim gave full welly, Charlie sounded pristine and gleaming, Cherisse banged the absolute shit out of her kit. You know…they just displayed why they are riding the crest of a wave yet again!
So, the telly is turned off and I decamp to my bedroom, snuggle into my bed and get myself set up to tune into Billy Sloan’s show on BBC Radio Scotland. I should really tune into Billy’s show more often than I have been recently. He is great.
Come 11pm, and after the news is done, we go into the interview with Jim and Charlie. I’m feeling grand, you know. They smashed the ‘Later…’ appearance and now a “wee blether” is gonna happen between three old pals. The patter I’m looking forward to starts to happen. Talk of “foosty” peanuts and an empty hotel which makes it feel like The Shining “all work and no play makes Jim a dull boy.” (They didn’t say that. Lol) Jim talks about the early days and that they were in a flat share/squat thing…and he said the location. Well, he named the street it was on. Wilton Street. I had to see where that was. FUCK ME! Only up the fucking road, wedged between Maryhill Rd and Queen Margaret Drive, WTF?! Never knew that they spent any time “up North.” (Well…bordering the West End, actually. Surprised he didnae get a nose bleed being there! Lol) I’d heard him mention this flat share thing before, but not where it was. So that was news to me that there’s a bit of Kerr/Burchill SM history literally just up the road from me. (It’s not THAT close, but I see anything within the vicinity of the canal or the Great Western Road/Byres Road crossroads as “local”. Put it this way, Wilton Street’s a lang way fae Toryglen and way closer to ma hoose!
Anyway, I digress.
As we’re nearing the end of the interview, it takes a downward tone for me. Billy asks about what the future has in store. Will there be a tour for DOTH? And beyond that…what’s the future looking like? More recording? More touring? Charlie liked the concept of the nice rounded figure of 20 albums under their belt. He also seemed to suggest that they’d go on touring into the foreseeable future. Then Mr Sourpuss chimed in with a “Hold up, Charlie Boy! Woah there! Wait up a cotton picking minute! It’s alright for you! I have to go running about like a whirling dervish on the stage each night, you just stand there with your guitar!” Oh, Jesus Christ!
So, it appears that Jim sees an actual finality to it all. And I feel he really wants to “bow out gracefully”, which I can definitely see the appeal of and appreciate why he’d want to do that. End on a high. Leave them wanting more. It’s why David Tennant chose to leave Doctor Who when he did – for those exact same reasons. I get it! But the swell of creativity and the force of the live performance they have right now just juxtaposes this idea of “retirement”. The dreaded R word. The realist in me appreciates there does need to be a finality to things. Would I REALLY want Jim to be like Bryan Ferry – 77 years old and hardly able to sing a note with strength and clarity? Probably not. But…I did go and see Roxy just a few weeks back because I wanted to see them as a performing band at least once in my life.
I know I am being incredibly selfish here. I feel like my own fandom is still in its infancy, only being 8 years into my story with Simple Minds. For me, them bowing out of touring and recording – bringing an actual close to Simple Minds. To draw a veil over it all WOULD be like a death. And as much as I know these things are inevitable, I find them uncomfortable subject matter. I have always found the talk of mortality hard. Not as much death itself. Not the concept of dying, as such, but the void it leaves. That’s the part of it I can’t deal with.
Back in 2015/16 when I was back out in Oz with mum, she would talk to me about death almost every day. Wishing to be gone. She wanted her life to stop – and she asked me to help it to stop. I probably really shouldn’t share this here. But my mum wanted me to assist her with suicide. And as much as I loved her and as much as I could see the pain she was in every day – how could I do it?! How could I help her?! Honestly, I’d have liked to. The only thing that actually stopped me from doing it was knowing I’d be breaking the law. The thought that I’d be found out and then prevented from returning to the UK, arrested, given a jail sentence. Geez! I couldn’t bring myself to do it! That felt sssoooooooo selfish! I felt sssooooo guilty. How hard it was for me to have to say no to my own mum. This is why I am pro-assisted suicide and pro-euthenasia. To hear her say every day that I was with her, “I just want it over with now.”
And I know the ending of Simple Minds is NOTHING LIKE THAT! I just can’t face the talk of the finality of it. Jim said “nothing lasts forever.” I know! Life itself is finite – unless you’re a Buddhist, then you probably don’t see life as finite.
Yeah. Again, this is another piece of blog writing that for me has not turned out the way I would have liked it to. I get that Jim is thinking about it. I do understand the reasons why. I’m just uncomfortable with the discussion of it and I am lamenting the end. If I am told there is a definite end point, then that will take all my focus.
I know! I’m Miss Living-in-the-past! I’m the one with photos of Jim from 1981 and 1982 all over my walls. I’m the one that listens to the early bootlegs and the one that watches all the early footage, trying to recapture a past with the band that I never actually experienced first hand. I know I have a nerve! And if it was ALL I did. If ALL I did was go on about their past and not attend gigs and not listen to their new music and not continue to support them in the present day, it would be a more than fair counterargument to tell me to fuck right off! But I absolutely LOVE this band as much today as I do of them in those early days. Look at me last Saturday! I can still barely string two words together in front of Jim! I have no words to truly define and encapsulate all that this man means to me, as a person, as a performer, as a lyricist. I do metaphorically worship the ground he walks on. But it is all of it. All that Simple Minds music embodies. It is the most uplifting, joyous, life-affirming thing in the world. And if that ends?! If it ends….
I can’t bear to think of it. I just can’t.